“Where did you find them?”
“Like I said, just north of Bramble Brook. That town on the road that splits off northwest from Weismes. Maybe a day away on horse?”
“That would be a fast horse,” Aurea smiled, albeit distractedly, at Jay. “Still. That’s not even close to the border. That would be weeks away from Volto, longer on a slow wagon. I don’t understand how they came so far without being taken in by any of the temples.”
Jay shrugged expressively.
“I don’t know. I talked to them a little bit on the way, but it’s not really easy to hold a conversation when you’re carrying a wagon.”
“Or a donkey,” Syd muttered from nearby.
“Anyway, from what they said, they were under the impression that the temples weren’t going to help them. Or that the empire wasn’t going to, anyway.”
“That makes no sense,” the beautiful high priestess shook her head. “Any who seek sanctuary from demonic invasion are welcome in the temples, regardless of their past or creed.”
“I know. But they were pretty damn convinced,” Jay scowled. “Can you let me know if you find out anything more specific from them?”
“Of course,” Aurea nodded. “I will keep you informed. We will find a place for them to stay in the city, as well. There are still many unused public properties, fortunately. These poor souls will be cared for.”
“Thanks,” Jay grinned at the blonde woman. “I knew I could count on you.”
Jadis hadn’t told Aurea about the attempted banditry that the refugees had almost committed. It was patently obvious that it had been an act of desperation. And based off of their meager supplies, had also probably been their only attempt. It was possible that they could have been lying about that, and Jadis supposed the group had likely at least stolen a few things while fleeing their homeland and heading southeast, but she trusted her instincts when it came to reading people. These people were desperate, but they weren’t murderers.
“Oh, Jay,” Aurea perked up as though she had just remembered something. “I almost forgot. Sholto was looking for you this morning. He told me to tell you that he would be in his sect’s high temple.”
“I’ll go say hello then,” Jay nodded. “Any idea what he wants?”
“No, he was being rather cagey. Which is honestly normal for the man. He does like to keep his secrets.”
Indeed, the high priest of Destarious, God of secrets, chance and trickery, definitely embodied his faith’s tenets well. The goblin had a tendency to be annoying, but never to the point of utter frustration. Just irritating enough that most people avoided long conversation with the priest. Jadis didn’t mind, though. She found that so long as she gave back as good as she got, Sholto was actually pretty fun to have a conversation with.
“Alright, well, I’ll see you later, Aurea,” Jay bid farewell to the high priestess.
“Take care,” Aurea smiled and bowed her head. “And go with Lyssandria’s blessings upon you.”
Leaving the High Temple of Lyssandria, Jadis made a beeline for Destarious’ temple. The large, open square that made up the space between the nine high temples in the temple district of the city was bustling with people, even with the sun close to setting. Most of the crowd were citizens who had come to the temples to offer prayers to the gods, but some were the badly injured who were too far beyond the normal healing methods and had to see more powerful priests in order to be healed from whatever malady they suffered from. There were a lot more of those over the past few weeks than Jadis would have liked to see, but with winter ending travel was becoming easier.
The war against the Demons was far away, but even in Eldingholt the terrible effects could be felt. Those with the worst injuries were constantly being transported from the front lines back to the capital city where the best healers waited for them under strict protections. There were also the thousands of refugees from the border towns and villages that had fled the attacks. Most were spread out throughout the massive Alfhilderunn Empire’s many other towns and cities, but a lot of the displaced still ended up in the huge city. It had the best defenses in the entire empire, after all, so many wanted to live in the capital so long as the invasion continued. Not even the news of the recent surprise attack on the city did much to dim that impression of safety and security.
“At least things are starting to warm up again,” Jay murmured as she glanced up at the branches that hung hundreds of feet overhead. “Spring means things turn green.”
The impossibly titanic tree that dominated the capital city was finally starting to bud. It was hard to see since the branches were so high overhead, but Jadis had been told by others that the magic tree was showing fresh leaf shoots on its smaller branches. That was, so she had been assured, a guaranteed sign that the winter weather was over and no more snow would fall. Spring had well and truly arrived.
“Spring means we can finally get back in action,” Syd said as Jadis continued to talk to herself. “The weather should be nice enough for some real test runs with Sabina’s experiments, too.”
“Gods, I hope that shit works,” Dys let out a sigh. “The goats do well enough, but they’re way too slow.”
“Better than dragging the Behemoth around ourselves,” Jay said. “Though not by much.”
“What are we going to do with them once Sabina’s experiments are done?”
“Didn’t Tegwyn say he was working on a means of increasing their speed?” Jay answered her Dys self’s question. “I wonder if we can train some of the new recruits to ride them. Sort of a mini cavalry force?”
“That could work,” Dys mused. “But then we’d have to come up with a means of transportation for them, too. Otherwise they’d never be able to keep up. We’re really asking a lot out of Sabina.”
“Eh, Sabby likes it,” Syd snorted a second later. “We just need to get her some more workshop assistants that we can trust so she can ramp up production.”
“Hey, maybe we can offer a job to those Voltonians we just helped out?” Jay perked up. “There’s no way they’re plants from any of the nobles.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean they're trustworthy,” Dys pointed out the obvious. “Especially considering the circumstances of our finding them.”
“It’s just a thought…”
Jadis continued to talk to herself in a circle of three as she made her way to the High Temple of Destarious. To anyone else who didn’t know her, it just looked like three giant triplet sisters having a conversation. But to the priests in the area, all of whom knew her well by that point, it was obvious that Jadis was just thinking out loud to herself in a way that only she could.
As she walked up the steps of the temple, Jadis’ external monologue was interrupted by an amused voice.
“Do you do that just to keep up the thin pretense of being three different women, or are you just weird?”
“How does someone who intentionally cuts their hair like that think they can get away with calling me weird?” Syd snapped back instantly.
“Who said this is intentional on my part?” Sholto, the high priest of Destarious, said as he ran a green hand through his mop of orange hair. “My barber hates me.”
“You could have gone to another barber.”
“What, and insult my sister’s cousin?”
“Your barber is your sister’s cousin?”
“Of course,” Sholto nodded emphatically, making his many earrings jingle. “Why else do you think he hates me?”
“Because he spoke to you for more than five minutes?” Dys smirked in triumph.
“A fair assumption,” the goblin agreed without blinking an eye. “Considering what a beautiful and charismatic example of goblinhood I am, many who meet me suffer from intense feelings of envy.”
Jadis rolled all three sets of her eyes, but didn’t press the banter further. Sholto was a master of trading barbs, as she had found out over the past couple of months she had stayed in the capital, so he would just keep going all day if she let him. She didn’t have that much time to spare, even if she did enjoy the goblin’s wit.
“So? What did you want to talk to me about?” Jay asked since that version of her self generally took on the persona of responsibility. “Has to be important if you’re meeting me on the temple steps.”
“It is important,” Sholto nodded. “But also not a conversation for the steps. Not unless you want to discuss what you’ve been doing with Lady Severina where anyone passing by can hear all the salacious details.”
“I’m not doing anything salacious with Severina,” Jay crossed her arms and gave the short man an unimpressed look.
“Yet.”
“Fine, you want to talk about sensitive topics, let’s talk. But I swear to D if you start asking personal questions, I will drop kick you over the city walls.”
“My dear Jadis, I am no degenerate,” Sholto responded with a look of false offense. “I have taken a vow of celibacy and would never pry into such ribald topics with you. Just ask my wife.”
The high priest turned and entered the temple, leading the amused Jadis into the hallowed halls of her patron deity’s grandest temple. Compared to the other eight temples in the district, the place was surprisingly humble. There were no huge statues or grand paintings, nor were there any overtly expensive or decadent trappings of wealth on display. The temple was simple and clean, almost to the point of being utilitarian. Of course, that was just what the place appeared to be at first glance. Just like its patron deity, there was more going on under the surface than there appeared to be.
Pressing his hand against a blank stone wall halfway down an innocuous hallway, a section of the wall disappeared. Sholto motioned for Jadis to enter, letting her take the lead. Inside the hidden chamber was a large circular meeting room with many chairs surrounding a podium. The interior walls had been either painted or enchanted to look like a starry night sky, and the chamber was dimly lit by a slowly rotating model of a solar system hanging from the ceiling that contained ten planets that were unfamiliar to Jadis. The complex mechanism looked like it was made of various precious metals and jewels, and it also had enough detail to it that each planet had moons or rings around it to accurately simulate orbit.
“That seems like the kind of thing you’d find in Metethys’ temple, not here,” Jay pointed out as she examined the fascinating example of Oros astronomy.
“That’s because we stole it from her temple.”
“What?” Jay turned a surprised face on the smirking goblin.
“Not just the model, by the by. The whole room. Quite the feat, really. They’ve been trying to find it for nearly six hundred years now. Make sure you keep the secret!”
“Right…”
“Now, I didn’t bring you here to show off one of our best-kept secrets,” Sholto said as he hopped up onto a seat in the circle. “This room is, as you can imagine, completely protected from any and all manner of scrying and detection spells. We can speak freely in here with no worry of anyone short of a god overhearing us.”
“Alright,” Jay nodded as her other two selves spread out to take up positions around the room. She didn’t try to sit, since she was still wearing her armor and would have broken any chair that wasn’t specially made to take her armored weight. “What’s so important that we need to talk in an extra secret privacy room? It’s not actually about Severina, is it?”
“Only a little bit,” the goblin held up his thumb and forefinger with only an inch of space between them. “I know she’s been trying to find you suitable Avatar candidates for breeding.”
Jadis couldn’t help but wince internally at the assertion. The statement was, for the most part, accurate, but she really didn’t like to think about it in such a bluntly pragmatic way. However, Jadis was, in truth, looking for women who would be willing to bear her children. She already had eight lovers, all of whom were more than willing to have her kids, yet she still needed more. That was because in order to have a chance at repopulating her effectively extinct race, she needed to have children with as many different women as possible.
It wasn’t just about fulfilling her end of the contract she had signed with the temples when she had first come to the capital some ten weeks ago. Jadis had promised them thirty babies from at least ten different mothers, never mind getting herself pregnant at some point. That had felt like a real kick to the guts when Jadis had agreed to the deal. Not that she was against having kids, she was very much in love with the idea of having lots of children with all of her lovers, but because the temples were essentially forcing the idea onto her. She didn’t like having her autonomy taken from her. That said, now that she had had more time to think about it, she understood their perspective a lot better, as well as the problem that she was facing. To start a viable population of Nephilim, she needed children with so, so many more partners than she currently had. Especially if they wanted to avoid issues like incest and inbreeding. For the sake of the future of her species, Jadis needed to, well, fuck.
Ideally, Jadis needed to find fellow avatars to breed with. While avatars naturally had a harder time having children due to lower fertility rates, they also had the chance to give birth to a true Nephilim if she were to impregnate one of them. Of course, the baby could also be the race of the mother, or on a low chance a hybrid race like a Naga or a Succubus, but that wasn’t all that bad of an outcome. More Seraphim or Dryads in the world were a good thing so far as Jadis was concerned.
Non-avatar races were still very much a possibility since given enough half-breed Nephilim offspring, it was theoretically possible to breed the species back into existence, but that wasn’t anywhere near as straightforward and efficient as simply finding avatars who could bear her children.
Some weeks ago, Severina had offered to help Jadis with her problem. That had, of course, led to some very lewd teasing on Jadis’ part and some incredibly awkward stammering on the paladin’s end. Of course, Severina wouldn’t be the one to make babies with Jadis. She was an active combatant, or would be as soon as she got her arm and wing regrown, and she was much too busy to worry about children right now, never mind the pregnancy pausing ritual, and she barely knew Jadis, even if she did find her attractive, and so on and so forth.
Jadis was fairly certain that she was wearing the staunchly reserved woman down with her constant flirting and innuendo. It had become something of a game. Jadis always looked forward to their interactions, even if she hadn’t managed to snag another kiss out of the Seraphim since the pecks on the cheeks she had given her in the palace a couple of months ago. Still, it was painfully obvious that the angelic lady was into her and was just too strict with herself to admit it.
“She’s been introducing me to some Seraphim she knows, yes,” Syd admitted to the smirking goblin. “Feels a little bit like she’s trying to get me to date her cousin sometimes, but she’s doing what she can.”
“Any luck?” Sholto prompted Jadis to continue.
“Not really, no,” Jay admitted. “I’ve met, uh, ten of them, I think.”
“Yeah, it was ten,” Dys said after a moment of thought. “Lucinda was the last.”
“And the worst,” Syd frowned.
“What’s the problem?” the priest asked with a genuinely curious look in his purple eyes.
All three of Jadis sighed heavily in unison. The answer was painfully simple, but still obnoxious to state out loud.
“We just aren’t compatible,” Jay explained with a frustrated shake of her head.
“Not beautiful enough for you?”
“That’s not it,” Dys waved the accusation away. “They were all very attractive. That one with the red wings was really sexy, actually. She had a real dominatrix headmistress thing going on that I was—anyway, not the point. It wasn’t about looks. It was about the connection. Or lack thereof.”
“The only reason they were willing to sleep with me was because they were asked to,” Jay continued. “I am positive that while they could all appreciate my beauty—”
“I mean, who doesn’t, am I right?” Syd interjected.
“—none of them were actually attracted to me. Though none of them admitted it, they were clearly only willing to have sex with me because it’s a duty to them. Not because they wanted to. A duty. There’s no way I can make love to someone like that, much less have a baby with them. I just… can’t.”
“It’s not about love though, is it?”
All three of Jadis glanced up from where her eyes had fallen to look at the goblin. His expression wasn’t the mask of mischief she was used to, but a far more serious and understanding guise that almost felt wise, if it weren’t for his terrible haircut.
“You need to have children. Those women were willing to help you. So what if they don’t love you? That’s not the goal, is it? Since when has love ever been a necessary component to making children, anyway?”
“It’s not,” Jay sighed. “It’s just that…”
“I understand,” Sholto waved off her struggle to explain herself. “If it matters to you, it matters. I’m not here to try and talk you out of your ways.”
“Then what are you trying to do?”
“Help matchmake, of course,” Sholto grinned. “My yearly allotment for deific consultation finished its cooldown this past week. Want to know what I asked D?”
Jadis felt a surge of incredulity at what the goblin priest was implying. Surely, he hadn’t wasted such an important resource on her?
“Don’t tell me you used your question to ask him to point out potential love interests for me.”
“Fine then, I won’t.”
“Sholto…”
“I asked him for those who might be compatible with you,” the frustrating man hastily continued after she growled his name. “Since he gave me some useful direction, I do not consider it a waste. After all, I don’t think it’s truly fair of us priests to just demand that you breed your race back into existence as though you are little more than a rare animal we’re trying to repopulate. In fact, should you ever feel the need to flee from that annoying little contract we forced you to sign, let me know. Shirking such overreaching duties is something of a specialty of mine.”
“Thanks,” Jay huffed out a breath of amusement at the goblin’s offer. “But running away from all of this isn’t in my plans at the moment.”
“Good. I’m lazy and I don’t actually want to work if I don’t have to. Anyway, I’ve potentially located a few candidates that you might want to contact. I’ll leave the details of how exactly you want to approach them to you, but at least I can say I’ve given you the means to repopulate, if nothing else.”
Jadis didn’t even want to imagine how a conversation like that was going to go down. What was she going to do, walk up to some random lady she’d never met before and say, “hey, want to help me save my species from extinction?” It wasn’t exactly the smoothest pickup line Jadis had ever used.
“Well, I’ll see what I can do,” Jay shrugged as Sholto passed her a folded piece of paper. “These women are avatars, right?”
“The best kind,” he grinned back at her. “After all, who could be more fun in bed than a friend who can transform into any fantasy you might have?”
“Ah, shit. Is this a list of Fetch?” Dys said with dismay as Jay opened up the paper.
“Wait, Jack isn’t on the list, is he?” Syd asked with growing concern.
“Well, actually…”
All three of Jadis spoke her next two words in unison.
“Fuck. No.”
289